A Glasgow-area maker of indium phosphide lasers, a spin-out of the University of Glasgow founded in 2001 as CST Global, now part of Sivers Semiconductors.
Sivers Photonics makes lasers on tiny chips. Its factory near Glasgow produces distributed feedback (DFB) lasers on indium phosphide, a compound semiconductor, used to send data through fibre-optic networks and in data centres, as well as in sensing and in FMCW LiDAR, a laser system for 3D imaging. Its lasers have supported fibre-to-the-home broadband, and the company now points to demand from AI computing, which needs very fast links between machines.
The company began in 2001 as CST Global, a spin-out from the University of Glasgow created to commercialise compound semiconductor technology. A partnership with Professor Kelly at the university moved it towards semiconductor lasers, and a university case study describes a decade of graduates and ideas flowing between the two. It moved to the West of Scotland Science Park, then in 2010 took over a wafer fab in the Hamilton International Technology Park, Blantyre, where it is based today. It became part of Sivers in 2017 and was renamed Sivers Photonics in 2020. We did not find a mission statement on the company history page.
The UK site is the heart of the business. By 2016 it was shipping about a million DFB lasers a month, and the university's case study calls it Europe's highest-volume laser chip supplier, with about 70 chip fabrication staff at that time. Press reports in 2026 say Sivers plans to expand its Glasgow indium phosphide production site, with building due to start in the second half of 2026 and the new capacity ready in the fourth quarter of 2027, aiming at more than 100 million lasers a year. Those figures come from press coverage, so check the latest news.
William McLaughlin joined as managing director in 2019 and is described by the company as a semiconductor veteran with executive and board experience at Motorola and GlobalFoundries. We did not find a culture page. The long link with the University of Glasgow, and the Lanarkshire location, suggest a firm that recruits from local universities, but that is our inference from the case study, not a company claim.
A wafer fab is a team effort. The roles in a plant like this include process engineers who control how layers are grown and etched, equipment technicians who keep the machines running, test and quality staff, device designers, supply chain planners and finance and administration teams. The group's other business, Sivers Wireless, works on satellite and 5G radio products. If you are interested in physics, chemistry, electronics or engineering, Blantyre shows that chip manufacturing exists in Scotland as well as in the south of England.
Website: www.sivers-semiconductors.com
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